190 THE COMPANY AND THE KING had drawn large profits from the Indian trade, the King of France was about to try to do so, and why should Charles alone among the sovereigns of Europe deny himself? Nor is it by any means clear how far his early connivance with the opposition inside the Company, or with its " battulated " member, was his own act or that of the creatures about him. To force the Company to sell him its pepper, and then quickly to resell it at a loss without paying for it, would be called by an ill name in a modern law court. But the king had given bonds for the amount, and when they could not be real- ized, there is a pathos in his momentary earnestness to make restitution, even by the sale of the royal parks. When he violated the charter by a license to, and his secret partnership in, Courten's Association, he half- believed that he secured the Company from damage by the condition that the new adventurers should not trade to its disadvantage. India was surely wide enough for both, and the king fancied that he could partition the Indian markets between the two without loss to either. To all this there is a plain answer. Charles was not an absolute monarch like the kings of Spain, or Por- tugal, or France, and his very twinges of conscience show that he knew it. Even if he had been an absolute sovereign, his father had limited the exercise of the royal prerogative by the charter granted to the Com- pany. He might have withdrawn that charter by giving the three years' notice to the Company and firmly fac- ing its opposition. But to this straightforward course
